United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Iraq/Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons Learned

Home , Ghazni Province

INTERVIEW #173

INTERVIEW SYNOPSIS

Participant’s Understanding of the PRT Mission

The interviewee, who previously served in Afghanistan as a USAID implementing partner in Helmand province in 2007 and as a USAID officer on a PRT in Ghazni province from 2008 to 2009, most recently served on a PRT in Wardak province in 2010. The interviewee saw mission of the PRT to provide stabilization and development activities in preparation for transition to Afghan governance.

Relationship with Local Nationals

Observations: Afghan local deputies were invaluable, introducing him to locals concerned with USAID projects. Afghan National Development Strategy priorities were at times in conflict with U.S. priorities. Current Afghan leadership determines the leanings of a province. In Ghazni, it is difficult to know who is really in control or whether PRT programs are effective. In Wardak, an effective governor helps the military.

Insights: As required by the U.S., Afghans had to contribute a percentage of a project’s value in money or in-kind services. Sometimes they went above this on their own. If one team said no, Afghans went from to another, looking for answers they wanted. Having Afghans come to the base put them in a situation of possible danger and retribution. However, that often worked better, in this kinetic environment, than U.S. civilians going out.

Lessons: Partner with local Afghans on projects.

Did the PRT Achieve its Mission? (Impact)

Observations: Success is difficult to gauge. A program to form a farmers’ cooperative and to export apples from Wardak province to India and Dubai was launched and continues today.

Insights: PRT tours are not long enough, since it takes months to become acclimatized, months to set up programs and more time to see them through. Also, the frequent movement of local officials leads to instability.

Lessons: Freedom of movement is an important element of success. Longer terms of duty – for both PRT teams and local officials -- enhance continuity and sustainability.

Overall Strategy for Accomplishing the PRT Mission (Planning)

Observations: Weekly meetings were held so that all team elements were aware of what was going on.

Insights: True coordination was elusive, as each element of the PRT had individual priorities. The military was over-interested in spending money and short-term measurability.

Lessons: Be transparent with colleagues on what you are doing. Realize we cannot do everything the Afghans would like us to do.

What Worked Well and What Did Not? (Operations)

Observations: There was no hand-off to a successor.

Insights: Lack of contact with incoming team left gaps in knowledge and continuity of programs. High and frequent team turnover undermines long-term achievement.

Lessons: In pre-deployment training, pair up people who are going to the same destination, so they are familiar with each other in advance. Train civilians with their military unit when possible. Arrange for adequate handover in the field. Stagger departures; team arrivals and departures should be tied to the Afghan seasons (for example, do not switch staff at the start of the annual fighting season or around long holidays.) Send people with appropriate skill sets for the job, noting that stabilization expertise is distinct from development expertise. Every activity should be small enough to monitor and measure.

THE INTERVIEW

Q. Can you tell me how long have you been there and when you will be coming back?

A. I started in Afghanistan in July of 2007 in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan. In 2008 I was a PRT officer for USAID in Ghazni province in the southeast. I was there for a year. Then in 2009-2010 I was a PRT officer in Wardak province, just southwest of Kabul, the capital.

Q. So you’ve worked in several capacities on more than one PRT. Could you try to generalize all of your experiences when answering these questions? What was your understanding of the missions of these PRTs?

A. My sense of the mission was to provide stabilization and development activities to areas that myself, as a civilian, and the military colleagues that I worked with deemed it was necessary; the

2 strategic areas, to make sure we could stabilize those areas so that Afghan governance could extend to those areas.

Q. Were most of them equally secure or insecure? Or was there a difference in how you could operate physically?

A. Sure, in all three locations the area that the PRT was located in was sort of like the capital city of the province and those areas were where we focused most of our efforts. And so a place like Helmand which had—some were very far off, just you really couldn’t pay attention to any of those far off districts at that time—then again this was 2007 when the Iraq War was very much the focus. In 2008 we focused on a few districts along the major highway, which is Highway 1. In Wardak we only really focused on the areas that were considered key. They were called higher-priority, and were the districts mainly along Highway 1. We tended to ignore the farther-away westernmost districts. We really focused on the areas that were capital cities and surrounding that.

Q. Were you the USAID person in all three situations?

A. In 2007 I was the implementing partner for USAID and when I was at the PRT in Ghazni and Wardak I was the USAID civilian.

Q. What kind of relationships and interactions did you have with local nationals?

A. I had local deputies in those locations—who’d I’d call my deputies or program officers—and he was invaluable he really introduced me to a lot of the locals folks that our projects worked with or impacted. Whenever we went out to survey a site or look at a project that was ongoing or completed, he made sure that were a number of beneficiaries or Afghans that were there that we could speak to. How often, that varies, but we tried to get out maybe three to four times a week.

Q. Did you have to travel with convoy?

A. That’s correct, a military convoy at all times.

Q. How did you find the Afghans? Did you feel that they had goals in line the U.S. Government goals in working with them?

A. Not really. The Afghans we worked with, the government, had their Afghan National Development Strategy, so those were their priority and sometimes it was in conflict with what we thought were priorities. It’s a little tough sometimes because what they think is a priority we think is a wish list of projects that they want. So it was sometimes difficult determine whether their Afghan national priorities jived with our U.S. priorities and just trying to clear all that up. It was a little tough to do, tough to defend.

Q. Where there some agreements involved when you did a project with them? Was there a promise of contribution by the Afghans?

A. Yes, for some of our USAID projects we mandated a commitment, like a 10 percent of project value buy-in. If the project cost $1,000 they would have provided $100 worth of either labor or something to buy into it. What we tried to do then was if the community was happy with what we did, we upped the percentage. The first time I did 10 percent, the next time we would have said, “Okay, well how about 15 percent?” In some cases it worked, in some cases it didn’t, in some cases we would mandate 10 percent of the work done and they were so excited about doing the work that they would actually do more. On their own—they would do it themselves. In all places it varied. In some places if we explained it was to build jobs, they could not provide 10 percent of labor cost.

Q. Did you hand off some of these programs in the end?

A. In one particular program yes, we did. It was with the export of apples from Wardak province to Dubai and India to help to form a cooperative of the farmers in the area and we got them registered with the Ministry of Agriculture and they’re continuing to export apples today, on their own, and so that’s a good thing. In other cases it’s a little difficult to hand things over.

Q. What would have helped to make your interactions with the Afghans more productive or easier for you?

A. Because it’s the war zone it’s tough to tell, because every move that we had to make had to go with the military -- whether to the governor’s office, which was maybe 500 kilometers, or to a distance 20-30 kilometers away. Sometimes we would tell Afghans, “Please come to the base" because it was a lot easier for them to come to the base than for us to see them. I’m not sure what obstacle that created for them because that certainly would’ve made them a security threat, as they would be seen by others as associated with the PRT. So looking back now it really would’ve been nice to have a little more freedom of movement for the civilians to get out more and talk to the Afghans about the projects and some of their ideas. When you’re a civilian and you’re living on a base, and everything is controlled by the military on the base, you sort of fall in line and just say, “Okay,” and move with the military. So looking back it would have been nice to be able to do that but I understand at the time contextually it would have been a little difficult.

Q. How would you describe the extent to which the PRTs achieved their mission?

A. It’s very difficult to tell if any of the PRTs have achieved impact. In 2007, for example, Helmand was a very different place than it is now. Helmand is a PRT area and it’s very secure. Now that’s involved a change of governor—and the current governor really does rule with a respect and U.S.-backed support. In Ghazni, for example, it’s tough to tell who’s in control of the area whether it’s us, the Afghans or the Taliban. In Wardak there’s a very effective governor, so it helps the military.

I guess what I’m getting at is that depending on the Afghan leadership it’s much easier or harder to assess whether positive impacts have occurred. There’s a lot of times if you talk about impact projects, sometimes a project takes three to four months to actually happen because of CERP (Commander's Emergency Response Program), or the military or civilian funding cycle. But if

4 you’re at a base for nine months with a PRT deployed for specifically nine months and it takes three to four months to get your money and between leave cycles and major holidays you got maybe seven months coming down. You’re always programming your activities back-to-back for the next rotation. So it’s difficult to actually show impact with activities.

Q. Could you point to three to four long and short term achievements that you were witness to? The Apple business was one…

A. Yes that was long term. Some of those road projects that we started in Ghazni and Wardak I think would be a long term one. And most of the capacity development that we did at the governor’s compound, we did lime industry and provincial government, making sure that we helped equip their offices. We made sure they had all the tools they needed to run an effective program. For short term, let me get back to you on that one when I come up with something better.

Q. Would you say the situation on the ground is any closer to not requiring a U.S. presence?

A. In the south that I’ve worked in, no. I don’t think their security situation or the Afghan National Security team is ready to take it on themselves just yet. I know they’re training hard for it, I know their looking at local police options but we have to remember that so much of our success is built in provinces where the leadership is only one man; so should that provincial governor be removed, should he be demoted, should he be killed—no. It’s still very fragile, having Americans pour coalition forces on the ground there still could be a help.

Q. So, is security the most important element in getting them off on their own?

A. I guess it’s similar to—if you’re thirsty and you need to go to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk would you call the police authorities to see if the road from your house to the grocery is safe? Of course not, you know that it’s safe. Afghans typically are on the major highways, so it’s unsafe after certain hours, so they have to fight against that. So security is certainly a big part of it. We have to understand that the government system in Afghanistan the government is not highly centralized, the people are used to being very highly decentralized. So yes I think security is a big part of it.

Q. Are they coming along, in the area of governance, in a fashion that will allow them to be independent?

A. I think in the individual districts, yes but like I said in terms of the provincial level, the provincial governors are usually one-person teams so if anything happens to that person it still creates a very fragile environment and because provincial governors are subject to moving by the president himself—we can do all we can to invest in a governor and realize two years later that person was moved and a worse person came in and we have to start over. When nine months is one of your tours we do sometimes weigh that and well how’s that going to actually work if we pool all this money and resources into one person and then his government will have the liberty to have him removed or killed. So it sort of a mental calculation that we do as well there as well. We also try and invest in, as best we can, in the informal structure, the tribal structure more at the

5 more district level—which is a lot harder to do because sometimes we don’t know who the actual powerful people are, but we also know that those folks, they’re not going to be moving. We do try to work with them.

Q. Was there an overall strategy for accomplishing the PRT mission?

A. At the time there was, there was the integrated civ-mil military action plan that was a group of State Department folks that came down to Kabul and sat with our PRT—for quite a while, a week or two—to chart out what the one year, two year, three year end states would be. And that happened in Ghazni and it also happened in Wardak. The problem was that very little of it was actually operational it was more, “In 10 years what do you think is going to happen,” it’s hard to predict, a year into the activities your engaging. It sort of just became a classroom exercise.”

Q. How did military and civilian members of the PRT coordinate their planning and collaboration?

A. It was difficult because on a PRT you’ve got several un-based entities that have their own projects in Ghazni for example, you had the Polish, you had the Agri-Business Development Team (ADT), and the National Guard entity that does agribusiness, you had the U.S. PRT, and you had the U.S. Special Forces. That one location, that one PRT has five to six elements that had their own priorities and do their own thing. What we tried do was simple, a weekly meeting, just say, “Hey, this is what we’re all doing,” and we were aware of it what our priorities are and what we’re doing and it was surprisingly difficult to do—just to make sure everybody’s finished with doing their projects was, what could you say, it was their money and stuff like that. So in terms of true coordination, there was only communication sometimes, in my perspective as a non-agricultural based civilian or agribusiness, they did their own thing because they were National Guard they were able to get out, a lot more frequently then I could, had their own security so they could snoop around some. And the Polish they had their own mandate from Warsaw to do their own thing. So coordination was really really tough communication wasn’t so bad but coordination—sitting around a map and plotting what everybody was doing was definitely a challenge.

Q. What about the part of Afghan nationals and NGOs in all of this process?

A. What would happen was if the Agri-Business Development Team wanted to do this activity they would always involve the Director of Agriculture and take it to different places. If the Polish wanted to do something they would bring in their expert and fly him directly. It was tough because we didn’t necessarily know who was doing what and which actions they were agreeing into this discussion. And so if an Afghan had come to the U.S. PRT and said, “Hey, I want x, y, or z,” and we weren’t able to do that person would go to the Polish PRT. We tried our best to communicate all this stuff, we didn’t know if gasoline was actually going to go to the Polish PRT so that was happening on activities and communication efforts, sort of what I’m getting at, sometimes happened—it was difficult—because we were getting all seven entities on base at that time.

6 Q. What about the budgeting process? How did you take into account both financial budgeting and the budgeting of the allocation of human resources?

A. I think for me and my USAID projects we made sure that in all of our projects we partnered with the local Afghans from the provinces to get the work done so when we had our own budgeting process, usually controlled by our contract officers in Kabul, they knew exactly what the budgeting was and how we made sure our resources were spent. I shared that with all of our military colleagues had the transparency to say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing and how much its beneficiary and who’s with what.” You know sometimes with the military you, we focus more on outputs and how we can show that we did something; and it was difficult sometimes because we really didn’t think about impact until later. So in terms of allocating funding resources it was more of “how do we get the money to do what we need to do in the fastest way”—because this does take a while—to actually get the money to do a project, from where we started to when it actually started. So what we tried to do in some of these weekly meetings was to coordinate and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing with this much money, how can we work off one another,” just to leverage our resources and that worked a few times. People had different sources and amounts of time to get the money, sometimes it’s difficult to jigsaw puzzle those together.

Q. On your the preparation for going over, did you find that the training was helpful? And if not, how could it have been more helpful?

A. When I did the training—currently the training is in (Camp) Atterbury, Indiana—it was in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. The best part of the training was that I was paired up with my incoming unit that I was to work with, that was by far—that was genius—that’s the most important thing to learn, to develop that chemistry between the civilian and the military so that when they arrive I’m not some random civilian but I’m actually someone who woke up in the morning, slept in a tent with 40 guys with them, went out on rough marches with them, and so they knew who I was and they felt very comfortable with me. That by far—best part of the training…The opportunity to have dedicated time with your incoming military unit to the site that you’re going to be working with is by far the best part of the training—some of us do the exercise together but also begin planning activities and projects that you have so that they see what you’re value added is, that is huge. When I went to my new site in Wardak, I didn’t get a chance to train with the incoming military unit, but thankfully they had fantastic leadership and I got to along really well with them. There are some cases that I hear, the civilian is just another civilian and they don’t know who that is so that is by far the best part, what I’ve learned from that training is to train the civilians with the incoming military unit they’re going to be stationed with.

Q. Let's go on to operations now—what worked well and what was an impediment to your working. First off, how was the hand-over when you began each of your assignments? Was there a smooth transition from your predecessor to you?

A. No, in the first case it was a gap of about nine months between myself and my predecessor, so no it was not. In my second year there was an absolutely detached hand-over because the person that I was handing-over to came in about four months into my existing tour, so I had four months to hand over, and I’m sure he was up and ready on all things. So that’s always a challenge,

7 there’s always an issue of making sure that we have an adequate amount of time to make sure that there’s a proper hand-over.

Then to my successors, in the first place there was a good enough hand-off, it was about a week or two of hand-off. People come in with their own ideas of what they want to do and sometimes when—if they really want to do something or they want to focus on making their own mark— sometimes they’ll drop initiatives and stuff like that so it’s tough to decide how—there’s no specific civilian protocol on, “this is what you need to do to when you have hand-off,” it’s sort of like, “I’ll tell you what I did and tell you the best way forward, but it’s still your choice to go with it or ignore it.”

Q. And what were the major impediments to getting the job done...the job in general?

A. Some of them were each entity to fund activities, for example in Ghazni when we have those five separate entities funding projects. Again a PRT’s tour is only nine months, so basically you cut off the first month in the middle for the leave, cut off the first and last month because you’re just getting there and then leaving, so that cuts it from nine months to six months. You’ve got a few weeks together throughout the tour because of holidays, or fiscal year issues you really can’t do anything so that cuts down to about five months. So you’ve about five months of good operational time, if it takes three to four months to program your activities and get funding for them mathematically your incentive to be a project crew and get it done sort of gets stilled to, “okay, what can I do in three to four months,” so you’re not necessarily thinking long-term and if you are thinking long-term that’s a bit of a risk because you don’t know the impact of what you’re doing.

Q. Would you recommend that PRT members stay longer?

A. Some extended for another four, typically most left after nine months. I don’t think PRT tours should go for longer than nine months. Also it’s a timing issue, when they come in, in the beginning of fighting season it’s difficult to start projects because they’re constantly upsetting themselves or there’s a security issue. It’s a big issue with timing, if they were to come in say September, now that’s a Muslim holiday, and work in these “off-seasons” to build up their community base and that trust with their community, then go into fighting season it’s a lot better than coming right into fighting season without knowing who’s-who on the ground. So I think we should adjust the timing, lengthen the tours—right now for example, we’re in the of June-July, we’re pretty much having a full turn-over, everyone from civilian leadership, the Ambassador, down to military leadership, General Petraeus is stepping down, right at the beginning of fighting season and that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have this kind of turnover at this crucial time. I don’t think they have turnovers, say at the end of Ramadan, which is August-September, and start it that way, work through the winter time, building trust in the community and then approach fighting season with much more of a community base. When you’re coming completely new to the team—it’s a very kinetic time—when you’re coming in it certainly doesn’t make the job easy.

Q. What makes summer the fighting season and winter the off-season?

8 A. Typically winter-time is colder, for the insurgents it is more difficult for the insurgents to get around, some of these roads are snow-covered and just can’t get out and maneuver very well so what they’ll do is go to Pakistan, meet with their senior leadership. The bad guys will go to Pakistan, which is warmer, and kind of just rest and relax for a few months. Where as in the summer time, it’s easier to get around, easier to maneuver and easier to fight so that’s one of the many reasons.

Q. In terms of cultural sensitivity, do you see that your colleagues, both civilian and military, are handling that well?

A. I think for the most part they are. I mean I’m thankful to be able to see an evolution of that in 2007 to now. In some of the beginning, we had a lot of folks that were in Iraq so they come to Afghanistan and say, “okay, whatever, it’s the same thing, another Muslim country,” they believe it’s the same. And I’ve seen the change, the people have been much more perceptive— and there’s always a person or two who really are not—but for the most part we’re at the point of the strategy, we’re at the point approach, people are taking a much more population-centered approach to what they do and they are adhering to cultural norms. Although I do feel that there is a bit of a tension with that, they are definitely invested—and they’ll get a chance to do so at the training.

Q. In terms of being prepared to do the job, did you feel that the civilians especially were well chosen and skilled appropriately for their jobs?

A. When I first started, there were only about 30 USAID field officers now there is up to over 200. So in the course of 1 1/2 to 2 years for the civilian service to go from 30 to 200, to put in that kind of skill set you really didn’t have to embody that to perform. Also you had to fulfill a minimum criterion, but there was also pressure to get bodies to fill out civilian services needs so we received a spectrum of people that came down to qualifications. In terms of the right skill set, we typically hire folks who had other backgrounds in Iraq or Bosnia. There weren’t many that were trained in stabilization versus development which is a different skill set and a different mindset. On one hand, you sort of compare stabilization and development as a chronic disease versus and acute injury. If you have person who has, for example, cancer, but you’ve also have a bullet in your thigh which has pierced your femoral artery -- so which one are you going to fix first? You’re going to patch up the wound your leg. That’s the difference between stabilization versus a much more long-term phase development. We had a lot of great development experts which got in tough with the stabilization experts. I do know that there’s sometimes a big compromise on quality.

Q. I’d like end by asking if you could suggest three or four lessons learned overall that you’d like to pass along to those who are doing forward planning.

A. Sure. Please think of timing of deployment and make sure that they are staggered you don’t all leave the country at the same time, like what’s going on now, we have major turnover right now. (Stagger) the timing of deployment—absolutely necessary.

9 Getting the hearts and minds of the population; we do have to expect the Afghans to come through on their own, we can’t do everything for them. A lot of times in our projects we’d ask them what they want and of course they want a lot while we feel that, “Okay, that’s enough for us on this project.” It’s so different than what we’d do back home in the States, if you see a problem with your home you identify the problem, call a contractor to fix it, and then inspect it afterwards to measure the impact when the contractor is done. We should do that here, every activity should be small and manageable enough for you to see what you’re able to do.

In a nutshell, you need more opportunities to have the civilians to have a train in-country before they get to Afghanistan with their military unit. The chemistry they develop in those two to three weeks training together is immeasurable when it comes down to when we come to the battlefield because there’s no awkwardness, there’s no getting to know one another—they know one another already—and they can move forward. So that’s a key theme to make sure that the civilians are training with the military.

Q. Thank you so much.